Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024) • Hacker News Board

Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)

#241

Post by lxgr » Tue, Oct 07, 2025, 7:32 AM UTC

idatum wrote: post #195

codazoda wrote: post #124

If you’re worried about your VPN provider but you can trust your VPS provider, try an SSH Tunnel. https://joeldare.com/ssh-tunnels-my-vpn-alternative-for-priv...

This is the way: SOCKS5 via SSH You do need some minimal technical understanding and some scripting. Pick any cloud provider that can give you a VM with SSH access. Read up on doing this on your local device or another device on your LAN: ssh -NT -g -D 10001 -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -o ConnectTimeout=5 -i your_ssh_private_key your_cloud_login@any_cloud_provider_ip Change 10001 to whatever. Now read up on how y…

> For Firefox, I create a separate profile.

Firefox supports per-container (and as such per-tab) SOCKS proxies, which I find really useful.

So useful, in fact, that I've come full circle and I am now running a userspace Wireguard to SOCKS proxy [1] in order to have that convenience for a VPN which does not have any host I could SSH to.

[1] https://github.com/whyvl/wireproxy

Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)

#242

Post by lxgr » Tue, Oct 07, 2025, 7:34 AM UTC

praveen9920 wrote: post #216

idatum wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the way: SOCKS5 via SSH You do need some minimal technical understanding and some scripting. Pick any cloud provider that can give you a VM with SSH access. Read up on doing this on your local device or another device on your LAN: ssh -NT -g -D 10001 -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -o ConnectTimeout=5 -i your_ssh_private_key your_cloud_login@any_cloud_provider_ip Change 10001 to whatever. Now read up on how y…

Major issue I faced in this method is the network egress costs the cloud providers charge. I had to remind myself not to accidentally land on YouTube or some other video streaming sites. Are there any cloud providers who don’t charge for network egress?

Many! OVH has unmetered plans, for example.

Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)

#243

Post by miroljub » Tue, Oct 07, 2025, 7:42 AM UTC

bilekas wrote: post #240

miroljub wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Now please repeat the sentence, but use Jews, Muslims, or PoC instead of Russians. Why? OP decided to use Russians, as they're free to do so. No need to bring your objections to personal feelings here.

[flagged]

Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)

#244

Post by CaptainOfCoit » Tue, Oct 07, 2025, 7:42 AM UTC

praveen9920 wrote: post #216

idatum wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the way: SOCKS5 via SSH You do need some minimal technical understanding and some scripting. Pick any cloud provider that can give you a VM with SSH access. Read up on doing this on your local device or another device on your LAN: ssh -NT -g -D 10001 -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -o ConnectTimeout=5 -i your_ssh_private_key your_cloud_login@any_cloud_provider_ip Change 10001 to whatever. Now read up on how y…

Major issue I faced in this method is the network egress costs the cloud providers charge. I had to remind myself not to accidentally land on YouTube or some other video streaming sites. Are there any cloud providers who don’t charge for network egress?

> Major issue I faced in this method

Biggest issue regular user might find with this is that basically all the VPS host' IP ranges are known, and plenty of websites give you a different (worse) experience compared to when using residential addresses, or straight up block you.

Personally I found the hassle to great, compared to using existing VPN services.

Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)

#245

Post by CaptainOfCoit » Tue, Oct 07, 2025, 7:43 AM UTC

sciencejerk wrote: post #207

Theodores wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the link. How does this work on the server side? It gets packets on 8080 and then what? The article needs to explain the server config, even if it is just how to install ssh-server. I have tried setting up OpenVPN on my own VPS and I didn't get very far with it. I have also had to use OpenVPN in the day job and I much prefer just using ssh without some extravagant OpenVPN layer. My experience of failing to…

I too recently tried to set up OpenVPN on a VPS and it was a huge pain in the @ss, even while following a (very long) tutorial. If I figure out an easier way to do this I'll message you in this thread

OpenVPN is just really complicated, which makes sense because of the context and history. But even me who've done plenty of OpenVPN setups through the years, found Wireguard a lot simpler and easier to both learn and use effectively. So if you haven't tried Wireguard, give it a go, the simplicity is pretty nice.

Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)

#246

Post by fy20 » Tue, Oct 07, 2025, 7:46 AM UTC

nerdsniper wrote: post #91

Note that all of these companies are also under the umbrella of Tesonet, a Lithuanian VC firm also headed by Tomas Okmanas (Tom Okman in TFA). Their flagship investments are Nord Security, Hostinger, Oxylabs, Surfshark, Decodo, Mediatech, and nexos.ai - all closely related business models around proxying. They don't seem to have Russian ties: "In 2022, CyberCare opened an office in Lviv, Ukraine. Although planning fo…

Calling Tesonet a VC firm isn't really an accurate description of their history. They started as an IT services company (which they still do), then split out internal services into effectively separate companies (e.g. CyberCare was originally built to manage customer support for NordVPN).

Now they have got more money than they know what to do with so are making VC investments.

Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)

#247

Post by black3r » Tue, Oct 07, 2025, 7:48 AM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #123

gruez wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Teddy Sagi had connections with the Israeli military intelligence sphere Does this mean much given that israel has mandatory military service? Unlike in the US where you have to make a conscious choice (eg. patriotism or desperation) to join the CIA/NSA/military, that's not really the case in israel. "has ties to unit 8200" might as well mean "has ties to stanford/MIT/caltech" or "has ties to big tech".

If I was running an intelligence agency and was given my choice of conscripts, I wouldn't hand my intelligence secrets to people who resented being forced to be there; or to mouthy people I thought might blab about it after the end of their service; or to people with an anti-authority streak or at risk of a Snowden-style attack of conscience about civil liberties. I would select for people with a deep love of their c…

On the other hand, if as an aspiring software engineer I was forced to do military service and had the option to do it as part of a military cybersecurity unit, I'd pick that over running around with weapons without blinking an eye.

Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)

#248

Post by mrweasel » Tue, Oct 07, 2025, 7:56 AM UTC

justapassenger wrote: post #8

Is there any other real world usecases for VPN nowadays other than: 1. Getting access to geolocked data 2. Torrenting "Linux ISOs" ?

It's probably more that a lot of people have been convinced that they need a VPN, but they don't. There are use cases, like I trust Mullvad more than I trust some random hotels WiFi. When traveling it can provide a slightly higher base layer of trust.

If you live in a country that restricts your internet access, which to be fair is most these days, a VPN can help. Most of us just don't care about those restrictions or they are more easily circumvented using a 3rd. party DNS. Also if you're in country like Iran or Russia, you really need to trust your VPN provider and strange corporate structures and staff sharing really isn't helping in that respect.

For the average person, no you don't need a VPN. You might need one for a few days or week per year, if you travel and need to access your bank or corporate infrastructure (in that case your employer most likely have their own VPN). VPNs are a niche business, but online influencers have convinced a lot of people that they need a VPN for everything, which simply isn't the case for the vast majority of us.

Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)

#249

Post by immibis » Tue, Oct 07, 2025, 7:57 AM UTC

rasengan wrote: post #134

getcrunk wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So did you sell pia? Why won’t you sell your next venture ?

I did not sell PIA. I entered into a merger agreement to create a publicly owned privacy company. Without getting into detail, I left the company on principle receiving only 1/3rd of the value for the shares.

[flagged]

Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)

#250

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 07, 2025, 7:58 AM UTC

ashirviskas wrote: post #109

nerdsniper wrote: post #91

Note that all of these companies are also under the umbrella of Tesonet, a Lithuanian VC firm also headed by Tomas Okmanas (Tom Okman in TFA). Their flagship investments are Nord Security, Hostinger, Oxylabs, Surfshark, Decodo, Mediatech, and nexos.ai - all closely related business models around proxying. They don't seem to have Russian ties: "In 2022, CyberCare opened an office in Lviv, Ukraine. Although planning fo…

Don't forget ProtonVPN links to Tesonet, which they're trying hard to "debunk" (though no clue why, I have nothing against Tesonet). They only shared employees and accidentally signed apps with the same certificates, but are "totally unrelated". Their PR people are already on this thread. If they didn't try so hard to fight it, people might care less.

[deleted]